James Adams

I spent the first five years of my career investing premiums for life insurance companies. Subsequently, I worked for three years as a product manager for a $30 billion money management firm. In that capacity, most of my time was spent writing to clients about markets and portfolio strategies.

My former employer purchased billions of subprime mortgage bonds on behalf of banks, insurance companies, and pension funds. The bonds' collapse led to the financial crisis of 2008, my layoff, and the economic malaise that we continue to experience. Given the considerable public indignation about the debacle, I suspected that readers would enjoy watching one of the parties responsible for the bust get served a large slice of humble pie.

Waffle Street is the true story of a laid-off financial market professional (yours truly) receiving his first "real education" in economics as he spends six months waiting tables on the weekend graveyard shift at Waffle House. Although it began solely as a self-deprecating humorous memoir, Waffle Street also became a vehicle for imparting a lucid and entertaining explanation of money and economics to the general reader. Given the turbulence in our contemporary financial and political climate, the narrative couldn't be timelier.